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Thursday, July 05, 2007

I Didn't Break My Promise; I McGuintied

So you've just gone out and made a big promise -- to your family, to your boss, to that nice widow emailing from Nigeria. You've made your promise and people love you for it. Praise! Confetti! You are revered; life is great.

Now comes the difficult chore of rolling up your sleeves, and delivering on a creative way of breaking your promise.

...

One fundamental element of The McGuinty is misdirection. (The other: not crying in public when people call you a jackass.) You must acknowledge that, sure, last time around you broke your promise -- but that was last time! This is this time! And look! Over there! Is that my opponent making sweet, sweet love to the political legacy of Mike Harris?!

5 comments:

"And look! Over there! Is that my opponent making sweet, sweet love to the political legacy of Mike Harris?!"

LOL, while I do admit, John is taking a few, and only a few pages from the Harris play book (mainly on taxes and finding savings,... ya right tell me another on John) McSquinty is relying on the Evil Spectors of Harper and Harris to try to paint John Tory as an evil rightwing neo-con. the simple fact is that John Tory is about the least political leader we have had in Ontario for as long as I can remember. Mr. Tory comes from a solid business background where results were demanded and bs was not tolerated. I expect that once John get into office (hoping) we will see more of a business like approach to runinng government. That doesn't mean Rightwing, it means solving problems without the political bullshit spin.

Here's to hoping.

PS, McSquinty hasn't done an awefull job either, I just believe Tory can do a better job at running Ontario

The MacKay Mach 1 still sets the bar for promise breaking though, I think.

"Peter MacKay developed a huge following among promise-breakers years ago when he successfully executed one of the most difficult manoeuvres known to the disingenuous: going back on an agreement made in writing and broadcast on national television."

The Mach 2 is great too!

"Now the legend is back! The MacKay Mach II, unveiled last week, demonstrates the mastery of a promise-breaker at the top of his game. Here's how it works:

(1) Make a promise (in MacKay's case, he promised that no Conservative MP would ever be turfed from caucus for voting according to his or her conscience).

(2)Break the promise (when MP Bill Casey voted with his conscience, he was turfed from caucus).

(3)Smile widely and say, as MacKay did, that you "never believed" anyone would meet the conditions of your promise. Ergo: because you never thought your promise would need to be honoured, you can't possibly be expected to honour your promise.

Let's try it in an ordinary, everyday context:

(1)You promise to pay a hit man $50,000 to kill your business associate.(2)The hit man kills your business associate.(3)You tell the hit man, preferably over the phone or while hiding behind Superman, that you "never believed" he'd actually kill your business associate -- and are therefore under no obligation to honour your pledge.

It's brilliant! After all, there's nothing that says a promise means that something will certainly happen or be done. Except, you know, the dictionary."